Andrea Carter

The Work of Summer

I race the sun
in the wild mustard field,
the monarchs lace

the northern hemisphere
of my lungs. Boredom
is dangerous, chambers

enclosed in sugar maple
rings, daylight opens each
night at its seam. Out

of the granite boulders,
scree, out of hiding from
my own body, out of

hiding from myself, I
am a honey, a wax, a gold
light. I run to the scent of

water, my head is a beehive—

---

Andrea Carter is from Southern California. Her work is forthcoming or appears in The Comstock Review, Catamaran, Painted Bride Quarterly, Terrain, The Common Ground, SWWIM, and The Florida Review. A finalist for the Bellingham Review Poetry Prize, she won the 2023 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize. She teaches at UC San Diego.